356 THE LAW OF EVOLUTION CONTINUED. 



characterizing advanced nations. It is needless to 



trace out this progress from its first stages, up through the 

 caste divisions of the East and the incorporated guilds of 

 Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributing organ- 

 ization existing among ourselves. Political economists have 

 long since indicated the evolution which, beginning with a 

 tribe whose members severally perform the same actions, 

 each for himself ends with a civilized community whose 

 members severally perform different actions for each other; 

 and they have further pointed out the changes through 

 which the solitary producer of any one commodity, is trans- 

 formed into a combination of producers who, united under 

 a master, take separate parts in the manufacture of such 

 commodity. But there are yet other and higher 



phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the hetero- 

 geneous in the industrial organization of society. Long 

 after considerable progress has been made in the division 

 of labour among the different classes of workers, there is 

 still little or no division of labour among the widely sepa- 

 rated parts of the community: the nation continues com- 

 paratively homogeneous in the respect that in each district 

 the same occupations are pursued. But when roads and 

 other means of transit become numerous and good, the dif- 

 ferent districts begin to assume different functions, and to 

 become mutually dependent. The calico-manufacture lo- 

 cates itself in this county, the woollen-manufacture in that ; 

 silks are produced here, lace there; stockings in one place, 

 shoes in another; pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have 

 their special towns; and ultimately every locality grows 

 more or less distinguished from the rest by the leading occu- 

 pation carried on in it. Nay, more, this subdivision of func- 

 tions shows itself not only among the different parts of the 

 same nation, but among different nations. That exchange 

 of commodities which free-trade promises so greatly 

 to increase, will ultimately have the effect of special- 

 izing, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each 



